Quite frankly I don't think anyone with some smarts is hating and blaming Bush. Its quite obvious that the policy of installing a passive dictatorship (passive to the US that is) has been going on for a long time and has worked well for the benefit of us Americans. If all the oil rich nations were to become true democracies fuel prices would be the least of our worries.
The trick is not to install a democracy the trick is to install a regime that can appease the people so we can get the resources we need. Case in point: Nigeria.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/04/africa_polluting_nigeria/html/1.stm

Unfortunately we've run into a little snag in the gulf called Islam. Unlike other countries where it is easy to create rebels, bribe government officials even Presidents, assasinate leaders or just plain ignore all the above, the islamic countries have a truly unique bond and strength in their religion that will be next to impossible to subdue. You can't bribe it, you can't assasinate it, and its not something tangible you can eliminate. If we're going to test their resolve against ours on their turf we will lose, its no contest. I am not saying this from a stand point of admiration, trust me if I was there i would be the first to pull the trigger on a bunch of them, I am just looking at islamic history and Israel/Palestine and its not pretty.

You can sit there and kid yourself on how righteous we are but we are there for their resources period. They are not fooled for a bit by that democracy rhetoric. If we were to pull out and the Iraqis were to vote to never give us any oil would we bow to their decision. Somehow I think not.


All Bush did was expose our policies to the world and to oblivious Americans in our SUV's. Its like catching yourself in the mirror picking your nose and thinking god you look ugly doing that, but you've been doing it for ages buddy. And once you've walked away from the mirror you'll probably do it again.